A Light in Dark Places
by Thethuthinnang
Summary: BtVS.LotR. And high in the north she set a crown of seven stars to swing, the Valacirca, the Sickle of the Valar and a sign of doom.
1. Angaladh

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Note: An answer to RemingtonSmythe's "Hell on Arda" Challenge over at Twisting the Hellmouth.

Near dawn, the fighting abruptly subsided, then ceased, and there was a break in the battle. The copsewood was a stretch of ragged frith, broken thicket, and _yrch_ corpses, scorched with fire and gnawed by sword blows and arrow bites. For several, breathless moments, everything was quiet but for the harsh breaths of those who still lived.

He lowered his bow, gritting his teeth. A finger beneath the sleeve told him what he already knew—the wound had opened again, and blood drenched the left side of his hauberk.

"Angaladh," someone called. Angaladh recognized the voice of his brother, Morgaladh, who had taken position in a _talan_ higher than his. Morgaladh's face was awash with blood from a wound to his head—he had had his helmet struck from his head by a pike. "The _Uruk-hai_ are on our flank!"

"Hold," Angaladh shouted to him, even as he strung his last arrow, searching for a target through the trees. "We must hold!"

Behind and above, he could hear the whispers of the women from the highest _telain_, the few that he and his men had managed to keep alive. The children with them no longer wept, and he could not hear them.

"Angaladh," cried a man to his left—Glanlhass, barely more than a boy, now missing the third finger of his left hand and with most of his hair burned from his head. "The ground force is gone. The _Olog-hai_ come."

His grip faltered. Bile filled his mouth. _No._

Out of the far woods, in the darkness from where they had fled, howls filled the air. Shouting, the clash of steel, the screams of men, women, and children. The _talan_ shuddered beneath Angaladh's feet, and the black shapes of the _yrch_ horde roiled in the gloom.

The smoke of corpses and trees burned in his eyes, his throat. Angaladh had been fighting for nearly three days without rest, since the first moment of the final assault on the Halls of the King, leagues south of where they were now, at the very border of _Taur e-Ndaedelos_. Then, his warband had been two hundred.

Now, they were fifteen.

His last arrow was in his hand. He knew his men could not have many more of their own. They would have to draw swords and close with the _yrch_, for the last of the swordsmen on the ground had been struck down only moments earlier.

Angaladh glanced at the sky. Here, nearly at the very foot of the mountains of the Withered Heath, there were gaps enough in the treetops.

It was the chill damp before dawn, yet there was no light. The smoke of the fires in the South had darkened the clouds, filled the air with ash, and hidden the stars themselves.

"Angaladh." Glanlhass was looking at him. They were all looking at him, those few who still stood, faces haggard, exhausted, and hopeless. Bloodied and battered. "What can we do?"

_Nothing._ Angaladh bit his tongue. _We can do nothing._

Yet they were still watching him, and so he said, "Give the women time."

Glanlhass's eyes widened, but he did not protest. No one did. Warriors all, they understood that they had done all they could do.

Angaladh turned away, despairing.

Despair had driven them to the North. The Halls of the King were naught but blackened stone, the last of her defenders broken and harried through the woods. _Olog-hai_ and _Uruk-hai_ stalked beneath the branches, torturing and killing all those who could not hide, could not escape. Those south of the _Emyn-nu-Fuin_ were either dead or fled westward, and they had heard nothing of the King since he had led the last army through the Narrows, to the relief of the Galadhrim.

North had been the only direction left to them. To the East, Easterlings and _yrch_ besieged Erebor and Dale. To the West, the Ford of the Carrock churned with blood. Angaladh had seen no other way to go but northward, and there they had gone, hurrying women and children ahead of them.

Here, at the edge of the wood, where they had flown as far as they could, they had been caught, and they would die.

_"Angaladh,"_ someone whispered.

Morgaladh caught his eye. Slowly, cautiously, he lifted a hand and pointed, for Angaladh's eyes to follow.

The figure was small, and clad all in black, half-hidden in the shadow of a copse of elms. The head wore a narrow cowl, ragged and dirty, wrapped tightly at the throat and covering the mouth, hiding the eyes and hair. On the body was a filthy leather brigandine, and about the waist a girdle of iron and black, wide enough to be a sheathe for the hips and loins.

The arms and legs, however, were bare—and from then Angaladh knew that this was a girl.

And not only a girl, but a child of Men.

Beside him, Glanlhass gasped, horrified, and moved forward, dismay in his eyes, opening his mouth to call out to her.

Angaladh grasped him by the arm, in a grip that made Glanlhass hiss between his teeth.

"Angaladh?" whispered Glanlhass, but Angaladh had no eyes for him.

The _adaneth_ was looking up, at them, where they stood concealed in the heights, her face only a shadow beneath the cowl.

Angaladh felt more than heard his men still, the women above abruptly silencing. He himself had tensed, his arm aching to raise his bow.

But something stopped him.

From nearer than before, the howl and tramp of _yrch_ came drifting through the dark and the trees.

The _adaneth_ turned her head, briefly, toward the noise, before looking back up at Angaladh. She moved quietly, calmly, utterly indifferent to the coming peril.

The black-clad girl raised her head, the face he could not see. A hand came up—a small hand, at the end of a slight arm—and placed the extended first finger against her mouth.


	2. Thorir

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

The Man that Thorir had carried on his back since the Easterlings rammed open the Gate of Erebor died of his wounds before the cliffs of the Withered Heath.

Gudrun, Hrafn's wife, helped him lay the Man out on the rocks. They had had to strip him of his armor for the weight, but Gudrun had kept his sword, and now laid it on his breast.

"Aule keep him," she whispered.

Thorir did not know the lad's name. Young, even for Men, and dark-haired, he had been one of the Dalesmen who had come with the Mannish King when the people of Dale were forced from their own holds and into the Mountain, and he had fought with them when the Easterlings finally breached the Gate.

"Aule keep him," said Thorir, but his prayer was empty.

His shoulder ached where an axe had bitten him. The cap of his helm was dented over the left temple, and the articulated beard-sheath broken off. His beard was matted with gore, and his back ached, was damp where the Man had bled through the chain and the shirt.

Gudrun walked away, was stooping down to look at the bleeding arm of a _Khuzd_ child. There were a number of them, some still babes in their mothers' arms. Their faces were white with shock, and they clutched at the sleeves of the few Dwarf women and elderly who were close. Many of the children were without their mothers or fathers, having lost them to the killing or the dark.

They were perhaps two hundred, only a fraction of those that had fled when the Mountain was taken. Most were Dwarves, though there were among them Dalefolk, including eight children. The flight from the Mountain had been panicked and disarrayed, with irregular fighting as those despoilers not taken up with the sacking turned to harrowing those fleeing.

For two days they had walked, and at the edge of the Withered Heath, in the hills below the desolate cliffs, had finally been forced to stop.

Thorir turned to look for his shield-mates, and found them already gathering on the slope of the hill, below where the women, children, and aged huddled. Many of the _Khazad_ were grievously hurt, one whitebeard missing his arm below the elbow, but no one denied any man his place. Assembling with them were what few of the Dalesmen still lived and could walk, and these formed their ranks beside those of the Dwarves.

Twenty-four Dwarves, and twenty-three Men. Thorir met Gudrun's eyes where she stood with the other Dwarf-women, a knife in her hand.

Axe on his shoulder, he went down to take his own place in the line, and found himself standing next to a Dalesman.

This Man was larger and older than the boy had been, and still wore his armor, much rended by blows. Black-haired, he was wide in his shoulders, and wore the tabard of the King of Dale.

"I am Haln," said the Man. A terrible cut marred his left eye, and he put his weight to the left. "A sword-bearer of Brand the King."

Thorir scratched at his beard. "Thorir son of Thorgrim." Then, without thinking, "At your service, and your clan's."

"And mine at yours," replied Haln.

They stood for a moment, somewhat awkwardly, as the ranks straightened itself out around them.

The light was weak and gray, the Sun a silver coin obscured by the smoke that still drifted dark out of the South. Thorir glared into the distance, over the rock-strewn fields they had staggered through only hours earlier.

The _Rakhas_ that came were not many. A warband of a hundred, perhaps, the White Hand at helm and shield. They came at a Wargish lope that seemed to swallow the miles, and when the Orcs nearest caught sight of the prey they tracked, a hundred orcish throats opened with howls that filled the air.

Regret tightened Thorir's gut. If only he had died in Erebor, defending the halls of his ancestors! If only he had stayed and fought, rather than abandoned his home! Why had he come? Why had he lived?

"We must hold," someone said. A Dwarf-lord in a red cloak, his winged helm slick with blood. "We must give the women time."

A grumble of understanding from the _Khazad_, bleak looks from the Men.

The _Uruk-hai_ came on, shrieking and charging in berserker manner, shields low for knowing their quarry had no arrows. They came arms flailing, gnashing their teeth, barely half a mile away—

—and then one stumbled, staggered, collapsed, and was still.

The warband stopped, their yowls dying in their throats. The _Rakhas_ stared, as Thorir stared, as they all stared, at the _Rukhs_ that had fallen.

At the long, white-fletched arrow in its eye.

Thorir's mouth opened. He turned, abruptly, along with all the other Dwarves, with the Men, with the women, children, and elderly, to look, eyes wide, toward the cliffs of the Withered Heath.

The sky was the gray of winter and smoke. On the cliffs, there, at the top, and below, where the rocks sloped narrowly down—

—and among the hills to the left and right of the one the Dwarves and Men had picked to make their stand, stepping now, out from among the stones—

—were tall, silver-helmed figures, clad in green and gray, bows in their hands and leaf-swords at their hips.

Haln gasped, his voice a strangled whisper, _"Elves—"_

Thorir closed his mouth. He looked from the Elves on the cliffs, to the ones on the slope, and then, in the rocks at the foot—

—and his eyes were caught by a figure there.

A small figure, coming not even to the shoulders of the Elves. A leaf-blade in each hand, wearing a gray cowl, a long tunic, and a girdle of silver stars—

Raising, now, a sword—

—and three hundred white-feathered arrows took flight.


End file.
